Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Two Short Films by R. Allen Kirkpatrick

R. Allen Kirkpatrick (b. 1937) is an American experimental filmmaker who
was active in the avant-garde film scene beginning in the late 1960s
and primarily in the 1970s, in New York City. His first major 16mm film,
Orange Jesuit (uploaded here) is dated from 1972. Neon (also given
here, first) is from 1971. Orange Jesuit deals with conceptions of
religion, demonstrated primarily through juxtaposition and contrast (the
title itself is inherently paradoxical), informed to some extent by
Mao’s theory of contradiction. It is also informed to a degree by Gerard
Manley Hopkins’s poem “Hurrahing in Harvest”: “The heart rears wings
bold and bolder / And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off
under his feet” — with the filmmaker himself, who appears as the
protagonist throughout, seen “off under his feet” at the conclusion.
(Kirkpatrick began his artistic career as a poet before moving into
film.)

When these two films were transferred to video in 1990, Kirkpatrick added a description on the box that reads:

After
these, Kirkpatrick’s next film was Naples and I Must Supply the World
with Noodles (1973), which takes up issues of political violence and
narcissism. An error in DVD transfer means that an incomplete version of
this film (only a few scenes) comes after Orange Jesuit (which ends
around the 18:00 minute mark).

Kirkpatrick’s
“masterpiece,” not given here, is perhaps Adrenalin Devours the Blood
(1975), which includes live footage of Lou Reed. Other titles in his
oeuvre are Against Nature’s Silence (1969), which deals with Chinese
history and Maoist philosophy, Green Bay Packers (1970), and Local
Tyrants and Evil Gentry (1971).

Some clear influences on
Kirkpatrick’s work are Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and
Jonas Mekas. All visual effects in Kirkpatrick’s films, the filmmaker
points out, were done in the camera itself, with only cuts, splices, and
sound being added later.

Kirkpatrick showed his films at, among
other places, Penn State University in 1973. On April 10, 1976, he had a
major showing at the Millennium Film Workshop when it was still in
Manhattan at 66 E. 4th St. (then curated by Howard Guttenplan) of Fight
Song, Neon, Orange Jesuit, Naples and I, and Adrenalin. (He later won
two Emmy Awards for his work as film editor of the PBS TV show The Big
Blue Marble.)

The early films — Against Nature’s Silence, Fight
Song (a.k.a Green Bay Packers), Local Tyrants and Evil Gentry, and
others — are 8mm. Neon, Orange Jesuit, Naples and I, and Adrenalin are
16mm.

The digital transfers of Neon and Orange Jesuit uploaded
here come from a VHS transfer that was made in 1990, then a more recent
(2009 or so) digital transfer from that VHS onto DVD. Adrenalin and
Naples and I, though not available online, have been similarly digitized
in this less-than-ideal mode. None of the others have yet been
transferred and exist only on the original film reels, which are all
extant. (The soundtracks for the 8mm films were originally created on
accompanying reel-to-reel audio tapes, since transferred to cassette
tapes. The 16mm films embed a soundtrack synched to the visual.)